In A House of Dynamite, Kathryn Bigelow turns twenty minutes into an eternity. The film throbs beneath the skin — not through explosions or spectacle, but through the unbearable sense of witnessing, in real time, the moment when civilization may collapse.

Since the 1980s, when The Day After terrified entire generations with visions of nuclear annihilation, few films have managed to rekindle that primal fear so powerfully, Bigelow, who once examined American power and paranoia in The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, returns now with a thriller that is less about war than about helplessness.

Real time as a trap

The director builds the narrative in real time: we experience the same span of just under twenty minutes — the time a missile would take to reach U.S. soil — from three different perspectives. From Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) trapped in the Situation Room; from the generals debating whether to retaliate or wait; and from the President of the United States (Idris Elba), a man literally carrying the weight of the world.

This repetition of viewpoints is what makes the film hypnotic. Each retelling grows more frantic, the voices tighter, the silences heavier. The suspense doesn’t come from the attack itself but from the lack of information: who launched the missile? Is there really an enemy? Or is it the system — this human machine of power and fear — collapsing on itself?

Justified paranoia

As many critics point out, and I agree, Bigelow subverts the awe of military heroism that marked her earlier work. Instead of glorifying America’s war machine, she exposes the absurdity of a structure in which a handful of people decide the fate of millions, within minutes, and with human uncertainty, ego, and emotion clouding every thought.

The movie taps into paranoias that are tragically justified. We live in a world of increasingly sophisticated weapons, eroding treaties, and fading boundaries of reason. The script even suggests that the missile might be an AI-induced error — a chillingly plausible idea. The irony is brutal: the more we strive for systems of perfect control, the closer we move toward our own undoing.

Humanity at the brink

Idris Elba delivers one of the most restrained and powerful performances of his career. His president isn’t a patriotic savior — he’s a man unraveling, trying to think rationally as he realizes there may be no “right” decision. When he shouts, “This is insanity!” and General Brady (Tracy Letts) answers, “No, sir. This is reality,” the film finds its thesis.

Bigelow offers no comfort, no catharsis. When defense systems fail and Chicago appears doomed, she withholds the image of impact. What matters is the moment before — the instant when humanity, facing the consequences of its own creations, recognizes it has lost control.

The paradox of safety

There’s a paradox at the heart of A House of Dynamite that Bigelow captures with surgical precision: the more the world arms itself for safety, the more fragile it becomes. She turns that paradox into cinematic tension, revisiting the fears that defined the twentieth century — and proving they still haunt us today.

The result is a suffocating, brilliant film, less about destruction than about time itself — the time we have left, the time we waste, the time we believe we can control.